


Business as Usual

by calliecaddie



Series: Reassemble [1]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23894452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calliecaddie/pseuds/calliecaddie
Summary: Months after the Vanished began to return, Jessica Jones and her friends try to return to normalcy.
Series: Reassemble [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722196
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	Business as Usual

Trish Walker always remembered that she’d have to return to the Raft eventually. She tried not getting too used to living with Jessica and distracted herself with the detective work that they did throughout the city. Part of her wanted to tell someone that she belonged in jail the whole time, but if no one asked, she didn’t say. And no one had asked for five years. 

As guilty as she felt, Trish knew that she could do better than to just wait out her sentence at a prison with no guards. She spent her time helping out with the New York census of the Vanished. She’d worked tirelessly to care for the displaced and exhaust every single lead to know without a doubt whether or not someone was gone. It wasn’t easy, but she didn’t need it to be. If she felt good about anything, it was having some purpose to serve. She hoped she’d served it well.

When people started to return, she didn’t waste any time turning herself in. She hadn’t said anything to Jessica, save for a simple “thank you” note that minced no words. It had taken some time to process her, what with the NYPD still scrambling to keep track of every person returning. Weeks had gone by until she was back behind bars again, but she returned with no regrets. New York was becoming its own version of normal again, and this was just part of it. She was content with that.

But hardly any time had passed since she’d been back in prison when she found herself in a private visitation room, waiting for an unknown guest who’d apparently arranged a meeting with her. 

A small part of her thought Jessica might visit. Trish had left her without saying anything and she figured she might be pissed enough to tell her off. She might have even wished for it. But she still tried not to afford any luxuries for herself, especially when Jeryn Hogarth made her usual icy entrance into the room. She carried with her a thick manila folder that landed with a papery thunk on the metal table.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Trish scoffed, squinting at the heavy folder. 

“Miss Walker,” she greeted almost menacingly as she took a seat. “You look well, all things considered.”

She thought for a moment. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about things. And to… do something a little worthwhile, even. Look, I really don’t mind serving a sentence, but it’ll go much faster if I don’t have to talk to you… at all?”

Jeri chuckled derisively. “I see time back on the streets has rubbed off on you in the least charming ways, so I’ll get to the point.”

“Wait… how do you know about that?”

Jeri only smiled wryly as she pulled her folder toward her and opened it up. “You know, you should consider yourself lucky. When I was diagnosed with ALS, I thought it couldn’t get much more horrible than that. I grew to accept that my body would slowly devolve into nothing more than a prison and expecting the worst case scenario came as natural as coffee in the morning. Imagine my surprise when I blink in the middle of my office and one of my subordinates has her name on my desk and tells me that five years have-” 

She practically choked on those last few words. She took a moment to compose herself as if the reality of her missing time hadn’t settled in until she said it. Jeri cleared her throat as she continued. “Do you know what the worst part is?”

Trish simply shook her head.

“ALS is still going to get the better of me. And as far as I know, not even an extra five years has changed that.”

“I’m sorry,” Trish said, almost meaning it. As much as they’ve butted heads in the past, she would never have any idea what losing all that time felt like. She adjusted herself in her seat and tried to change the subject. “So… why exactly does that make me lucky?”

“Because I’m pissed. And therefore, I’m not taking any shit from anyone. It’ll make negotiating your parole that much easier.”

“Wait, parole?”

Jeri pulled out the contents of her folder, which included several papers that Trish couldn’t wrap her head around right away. There were identification papers of various people, photos of her working with the police, and time logs that she couldn’t quite understand. 

“What's all this?” Trish asked. 

“For all intents and purposes, community service. My team is still going through it, but it seems you’ve been an enormous help in the relief efforts for this… blip, as the locals have taken to calling it. Given the unorthodox nature of this event, getting you a parole hearing is almost certainly on the table. We even have several witnesses willing to testify on your behalf.”

Trish let out a strange but grateful sigh, rifling through all of the papers. “Where… where did you even get any of this evidence?”

Jeri gave Trish a condescending glare. “Miss Walker, the less stupid questions you ask, the easier it will be to prepare for your hearing.”

Even while trying to remain strong in front of Jeri, Trish couldn’t help her eyes welling up. She wanted nothing from this. She’d resigned herself a life behind bars long before half the world went cold. She hardly felt like she deserved the second chance laid out in front of her.

“So,” Jeri continued. “Shall we get started?”

Trish’s eyes darted around a particular photo of herself taking down information for a lost citizen. She squinted at the reflection in a car window, seeing a hooded woman with long black hair, a camera obscuring her face. 

She looked up to Jeri, trying to make her smile seem smaller than it was.

***

_New York has a tendency to take things in stride. A subway accident is just a commuting hiccup. Aliens destroying Manhattan became prime real estate. Eventually, we even got over losing half of the population._

_So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that getting them all back became yesterday’s news faster than any other place. It only took a few months for the city to return to its own version of normal. People barely even noticed it when the city could breathe again._

_And of course, with them came no shortage of cases. It was like they never left._

Jessica Jones made it a habit to check on the Vidos every morning and night, just to be sure that they were still there. She’d become a regular presence in their lives again. She tried to remain casual about it. Yet she would never actually betray how much joy and relief it gave her to see them again each day. 

As she finished her morning rounds, she approached the door to her apartment. Jess started to fumble through her keys to unlock it. She dropped them on the ground with a tingling clang and groaned as she went to pick them up. 

The door opened as she grasped her keys, and she stood back up to see Malcolm Ducasse opening up from the inside.

“You know,” Malcolm began. “It sets a really bad example when you have a home office and you’re still late for work.”

“Did it ever occur to you that I can set my own hours?” she hissed as she brushed past him.

Jessica had barely entered her apartment when her assistant Gillian presented her with a notepad of telephone numbers. “You have _nine_ clients waiting to hear back from you about missing people.”

“We’ve been through this,” Jessica complained. “They all came back, didn’t they?”

“There’s still a lot of displacement to sort through. Parents who were out when their kids disappeared, people moving back to New York to find their friends and family.”

“Gimme a second.” She threw her coat off and moved toward her liquor shelf. “I have a promising lead on all of them at the bottom of some scotch that I’m gonna scope out first.”

“I haven’t been around for five years, but I’m pretty sure drinking on the job is still frowned upon,” Gillian spat.

Malcolm walked in to join them. “Yeah, but that’s never stopped Jessica before, has it?”

Jessica sat at her desk, she swirled some scotch in a glass before she drank some. “To be honest, I think I liked you two a lot better when you, y’know… weren’t?”

Malcolm crossed his arms and responded to Jessica’s glare with a grin. “Hurtful. So I guess nothing’s really changed much, huh?”

Jessica couldn’t help but smirk. Her mind reeled for a moment with everything that she and Trish accomplished over the last five years. It felt empty without the people in her life, but Trish kept her as busy as ever the whole time. Even with every intention of finishing her morning liquor, she tried to muster up a few leads to pursue her impending cases. 

_In a lot of ways, the world stopped five years ago after the Vanishing. And the people left behind had to make a choice. They could stay frozen along with everyone else… or they could keep going._

_I almost froze then. But Trish wanted me to keep going. She wanted us to change. That was her real superpower. She made heroes out of people, including herself. And she couldn’t stop until she played her part in making the world better._

Her phone lit up with a message from Jeri that read “Setting a court date for your friend. Meet me for the details.” Jessica stared at her phone with the smallest of smiles.

_Sometimes, that landed her in a maximum security prison for murder. But I know better than anyone that becoming a real hero took some trial and error. In her case, reflection and redemption._

_I found both in her. I hope she finds it too._

“I guess not,” she replied to Malcolm as she took another sip. “But the world is full of surprises again, so… who knows?”

Malcolm smiled, taking a few steps closer to Jessica’s desk. “Well, we can either keep getting caught up on these past few years or we can dust off the work banter. Give us the day plan, boss.”

Jessica gave Malcolm a strange look before she turned to her assistant. “Gillian, let me have a look at those numbers.”

_When the world is literally stripped bare, it becomes harder to hide who you really are. That’s why I never hid who I was to begin with. But the more things stay the same… the more they change._

_I have begrudgingly accepted the fact that I am a hero. Maybe it’s about time I got used to it._

As Gillian placed the notepad on her desk, Jessica immediately started dialing the first number. 

“Hi, this is Jessica Jones of Alias Investigations.”


End file.
